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Re: Absolute "file:" URLs under Windows95

From: Harold A. Driscoll <harold@driscoll.chi.il.us>
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 20:13:33 -0600
Message-Id: <Version.32.20000308194913.02371720@pop.interaccess.com>
To: "Marc Rubin, Jay's Island Software Development & Consulting" <amayalist@mail.com>
Cc: www-amaya@w3.org, jose.kahan@inrialpes.fr, mau@beatles.cselt.it, ptrourke@mediaone.net
At 19:09 08-03-00 , Marc Rubin, Jay's Island Software Development &
>References: <200003081559.QAA18848@tuvalu.inrialpes.fr> 
>My old local pages used "|" in place of of ":" because that 
>was the required de facto standard, for the reason Maurizio 
>mentioned. 

That is also the formal standard, IETF RFC 1738:

	http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt

I think it is very important that Amaya adhere closely to the Internet
specifications. Unless it does so, it would lose much of its value as a
tool for Web designers who are interested in creating well-behaved
(standards-compliant) sites.

>A looser standard would also accept the slashes 
>going in either direction, and 

This collides into several sections of RFC 1738, that backassward slashes
are ~unsafe characters~ within a URL (and hence must be quoted ala %xx) and
that the ~file~ scheme is quite explicitly defined to begin file:// .

>would allow either 2 or 3 slashes following "file:".

Just as it can now, with use of 2 and 3 slashes having quite different
meanings? Or were you suggesting what would seem a rather drastic violation
of the definition of the file scheme, by misinterpreting two slashes as if
there were three? Please, I sure hope not!

I'd think, with the experiences we have with two ~popular~ and
often-misbehaving browsers, we'd hope for Amaya to be a well-behaved breath
of fresh air.

Safe computing,  /Harold

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"...implementations should follow a general principle of robustness:
be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from 
others."         --  Jon Postel, "DoD Standard Transmission Control
                     Protocol", January 1980, RFC 761 at 2.10
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Harold A. Driscoll                 mailto:Harold@Driscoll.Chi.IL.US
#include <std/disclaimer>                 http://Driscoll.Chi.IL.US
Received on Wednesday, 8 March 2000 21:19:37 UTC

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